Bonnie Bungs It Up Again

Remember how on the old, politically incorrect Scooby-Doo, no matter who actually screwed up, they would blame Daphne? I wasted serious time this morning trying to find the catchphrase they said but to no avail, so if you remember, you’ll make my weekend. Anyway, that? That inclination to blame Daphne no matter what? That’s how I feel about Bonnie. I mean, there’s a lot of bloodshed and brutality on this show, and 95% of the time I chalk it up to the nature of the beast. But when it’s Bonnie, I just assume she’s terrible, and that’s why.

The worst part of this affliction is that being mad at Bonnie has to imply that I’m, like, happy about other things, like April being saved. When in reality, I relish the probable reality of the moment when April bites it (I choose to believe they cast a slightly annoying actress so that her death would be satisfying, more than sad), but because Bonnie is terrible, I have to be sad…? That she got hurt. I also blame Bonnie for Shane having been brought into our lives at all, because anyone with eyes can tell that he’s a terrible terrible otherworldly being, because nobody who’s human can wear that hair that way.

But all things being said, this episode was less powerful and a lot more whiny than I hoped after a month away. The best part about it was that in true high school form, love and loss are all centered around sex. How I wish Stefan was furious about Damon and Elena loving each other, instead of the fact that they had sex. Never has Elena been closer to the truth than when she referred to herself as a now-broken toy. Stefan has a giant Madonna-Whore complex where his precious Elena is concerned, and the idea that she could want to be with Damon – Damon who likes sex – in a physical way because she too likes sex, not because it was the purest horizontal way to look into each other’s eyes or some garbage like that – well, Stefan, like many dicks masquerading as nice guys before him, can’t handle it.

There is a lot of screeching online about how even this – even Elena’s devotion to Damon, physically as well as …mindfully.. – might still be a sire bond and he can’t even let her have her own free will and he is therefore terrible… but whether the drunkenness is due to siring or just plain oxytocin – the chemical your brain releases when you’re in love – what’s really bothering people is that they haven’t seen Elena happy like this: capable and standing on her own two feet and not apologizing for what she does or feels – thank you Julie Plec for making the girl stuck between two men know her own mind since all this began.

There’s a lot of talk that vampires have a certain amount of arrested development about them when they turn; nowhere is this more clear than in Rebekah’s teen-girl addiction this season and last (and a nice nod to The Breakfast Club that her sadism can be channeled into garden-variety Mean Girl/Jon Bender cruelty), but Elena is somehow growing up in spite of herself, and nothing makes people uncomfortable like other people changing.

I have no comment on Jeremy or his tattoos. Remember when he lived in Colorado for awhile?